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Failure: The Blog  

August 2018

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July 2018

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June 2018

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May 2018

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April 2018

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March 2018

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[More archives...]

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Tom Landry’s Failure

November 20th, 2013 - by Alyssa Shea

Tom Landry, the legendary coach that led the Dallas Cowboys to many amazing season and also Super Bowl victory, had a pretty bad first year in the NFL. But he didn’t let that failure ruin his career.

Tom Landry may be known as one of the greatest coaches of all time. But his career didn’t start out that way. In fact he lost every single game this first year as head coach in the NFL!

He started out as the defensive coordinator for the Giants, opposite Vince Lombardi, which was definitely a great success from 1954 to 1960. He then became the first head coach of the Dallas Cowboys for 29 seasons, which lasted from 1960 to 1988. His career was marked with great success, but his first couple of seasons were marked with failure.

Tom Landry failure
Photo © Flickr User slgckgc

The Cowboys had five or fewer wins for these seasons, which is definitely poor. It came as a surprise to many when in 1964, owner Clint Murchison Jr. gave a ten-year extension to Landry’s coaching contract. But this was actually a blessing, as the Cowboys went on to improve and win almost every game in the next seasons, and even a Super Bowl. Landry invented the now used and wildly popular “4-3 defense” and is hailed as one of the greatest innovators in football.

You might think someone would give up after that record, or get fired. But for coach Landry, learning from this failure was a secret to his success!

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